Hell Yeah, I Married a "Yummy"

As the Internet has already explained ad nauseam, a trio of HSBC researchers recently dubbed affluent, fashion-conscious, young urban males, "Yummies." It's a terrible name for something not so terrible.

Take it from someone who knows.

When I met my husband in 2002, we were both undergrads living in the same freshman dorm. He denies it to this day, but the first time we hung out, my future life partner was wearing a plaid, short-sleeve button down and cargo pants. (The kind on which one might hang a hammer if one were so inclined.) They were baggy from the hip all the way down to the ankle, where a pair of sludge-hewn Timberlands resided. And yet, even then, I could sense a burgeoning aesthete underneath all of the L.L.Bean. "I like your blowy, blowy shirts," he once told me over a shared plate of General Tso's chicken. He was, of course, referencing my preferred silhouette at the time: a halter top that cinched in under the breast bone and then flared out into eternity. Even then he knew his stuff.

Over the years, as he started making money, my dude became a little more Rag & Bone, a little less Jos. A Bank. I began to notice that he'd also adopted a new nomenclature. It wasn't weird for him to inform me that a pair of charcoal-and-white railroad striped pants actually "read gray." His friends, all former lacrosse players, started calling him Shia LaBeouf thanks to a growing predilection for floss-thin skinny ties. One time he asked a tailor to take in a pair of Levi's at the inseam and was regretfully informed that it wasn't physically possible to make them any tighter. My husband's fashion obsession has become somewhat of a running gag—one of which he is keenly aware. He's become fond of picking out his "fashion lewk" before nights out, inhales sharply when we walk past the Vince store on Washington, and often sends me links to male models wearing v-neck-hoodie-leather jacket pile ups with just one word in the subject line: "CHIC."

Now, before you go ahead and Google this guy to make fun of him, let me break something down for you. My husband is young. (Well, 30.) He is urban insofar as he lives in Manhattan. And he is male. However, he is not your typical "Yummy"—one, who, according to HSBC, is keen to "display social status" via his sartorial choices. There is no Buzz Bissinger shopping addiction happening here. The man is pathologically practical and never spends outside of his budget. He saves his favorite Rag & Bone henleys for special occasions so that they don't get worn out or stained. He doesn't own a single item of clothing that could be dubbed conspicuous.

And yet, there we were last month, cracking open a Mr. Porter box the size of a house. For his 30th birthday, I'd splurged on a clearance-priced, shearling-lined Margiela duffle coat in a woodsman's hunter green. It was a Hail Mary, really. There was only one size left, an Italian size 52. The model on the site, a 6'1" fella, was wearing an IT 48. But when my 6'4" husband slid the thing over his shoulders, the sleeves barely cleared his elbows. The leather toggles, which were effortlessly fastened across the model's burly chest, were a world apart. For all intents and purposes, he was very much inside the jacket, but it seemed as if the garment was perched atop his shoulders like a backpack. To say it didn't fit would be the understatement of the year. I was crestfallen. "But it's Margieeeela!" I wailed in disappointment. The reaction elicited so much laughter—and more than a few "Maison, uh, Martin Margiela" Jay Z impressions—that we kept saying it all weekend.

My point is this: In some ways, yes, I married a Yummy. He loves fashion. He stresses about what to wear. He likes the way his Crystal Fighters concert T-shirt looks peeking out from under a navy James Perse hoodie. But honestly, who doesn't? It looks awesome. The idea that this guy is going to reshape the $1 trillion luxury landscape one Miansai bracelet at a time? Now that's laughable.